


Before

by pollitt



Category: Versus (2000 Kitamura)
Genre: Dark Agenda Challenge, Established Relationship, Japanese Characters, M/M, Pre-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:49:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pollitt/pseuds/pollitt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is the tempest to your calm, the hurricane to your eye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EnohIO](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnohIO/gifts).



> I've been waiting to write this story for a year, since yuletide 2008, in fact, when I wrote the second paragraph. I'm delighted I was able to write it this year. This story takes place immediately before the movie.
> 
> EnohIO, I hope you enjoy your story.
> 
> To my betas, I offer my thanks for being awesome.

The sound of activity outside--traffic horns; people moving, talking, going about their day, yelling at one another; and birds perching on nearby buildings--wakes you up.

There's an alarm beside the bed, but you don't use it, haven't used it in quite some time. Not since the morning years before, when you were still getting used to sharing your bed with him, while you were still learning one another's habits and quirks. The alarm had sounded, startling him from his slumber and before you could process what was happening, his knife was embedded in the face of the clock, stopping the hands but not the noise. From that day forward, you haven't used the alarm, lest it meet a similar fate.

It's not as though the two of you have a job that requires a time card, a clean start and end time and a day that consists of cramped trains and small cubicles, of paper and numbers or words and the sterility of office life. You live in a world where the phone could ring at any time, The Man's voice on the other line calmly, almost lazily, giving the orders of where to go, what to demand, and who will die. And you do your job well--the both of you.

You are the planner, the thinker, the one who they turn to--those you are sent to visit--to appeal to your humanity. You're fairly certain it's the glasses, as though the presence of them on your face makes you more likely to listen to reason, to have your heart pinned to your sleeve, and to be less likely to place your gun to their temple or chest and pull the trigger.

He is the doer, the enforcer, the killer--a loose cannon, deadly with a knife, ruthless. There is madness in his eyes that some fear, others envy, and most stay well away from. They are usually running away from him when they run to you.

If only they knew.

He is the tempest to your calm, the hurricane to your eye. As it has always been, and as it always shall be.

_(This life is not your first together. This has all happened before and it will happen again. And then, as now, you have and will be at his side, and he at yours._

_He laughs when you tell him this, calling you his mad dreamer, but you know that he also wonders if it was more than luck that brought you both to The Man, and to one another. It was instantly familiar, like a hand touching a sword made just for it.)_

To the outside world, he is a force to be reckoned with--

There are moments that can stretch into minutes, sometimes even an hour, when you cross the threshold of the apartment and you watch him shed his skin. Watch him slink around the room, his eyes wild and the words, thoughts, idea pouring from him. You don't want to cage in this maniacal bird, and so you listen and wait until he calms, until he has returned to your side--his head resting on your shoulder, chest or thigh, or he reaches out and runs his fingers along your jaw and cradles the back of your head.

\--but in this sanctuary of your home, he can be quiet, graceful, almost fragile.

In the quiet of the bedroom, you watch him sleep.

The sounds of the day grows louder, encroaching into the safe haven of the apartment and you feel him move--his bare skin against the fabric of your shirt and boxers--curling closer into you, his face tucked into the curve of your neck.

You slide your hand slowly down the ridges of his spine, the tips of your fingers traveling the familiar trail. His smile presses up against your collarbone. He lifts himself onto his forearms, his face inches above yours and even without your glasses you can see his mad grin. (Not the one that he flashes to the outside world, the one that is as sharp as the blade of his knife, but a smile that will travel across your body, teasing, tasting, marking you.)

He leans down, his lips moving against your ear as if you impart a secret, instead there is the momentary pain of a sharp bite of teeth--marking you, as though the others don't already know--followed by a soothing kiss.

"You okay?" He asks as he has a thousand times before.

"Yes," you answer, turning so he's on his back, his naked body pinned beneath yours.

He's not the only one whose smile holds an edge of danger.

You shift, pushing yourself up so you are straddling him, your knees on either side of his waist, and you pull your t-shirt up and off, tossing it onto the floor, and his hands smooth across skin of your stomach, up to your chest and shoulders.

Leaning forward, you brush a kiss over his lips and move to his jaw, biting along the line to his neck.

His hand moves to your thigh, sliding upward toward the leg of your boxers and you grab it, pinning his hand to the bed beside his head. He laughs. Even after all of these years and although he might claim to know all of your tricks, he can still be surprised.

And as his other hand slides around your side and slips underneath the back of your boxers and he pushes his hips upward, you realize you can still be surprised as well.

The sounds of the outside world fade away as you focus on the sound of the blood rushing in your ears, the scrip-scrape of stubble scratching together, and the sound of his hitched breath.

The phone's ring brings you back to reality.

"If I wasn't already planning on killing him, I think I'd kill him," he says as you move apart.

He reaches for your glasses, his knife. You pick up your phone.

"Yes?" You don't need to ask who it is, you already know.

"The prisoners are escaping today," The Man says. "I don't care about the one, but the other cannot be killed. And there's something else I need you to do."

You listen.

**Author's Note:**

> I went back and forth with giving them names, but when I finally sat down to write, as it turns out, the boys didn't want names. And who am I to argue with two yakuza? And so... second-person fic happened.


End file.
